Arizona Wildfire Destroys 15 More Homes

Published 8:00 pm, Friday, June 20, 2003

A windblown wildfire that devastated a mountaintop hamlet destroyed more homes nearby Saturday as it swept over a ridge of television and radio towers and burned into a ski area, fire officials said.

It could take firefighters two to three more weeks to contain the blaze on Mount Lemmon, outside Tucson in southern Arizona, said Larry Humphrey, commander of the team battling the wildfire.

The fire, which burned about 250 homes in its first run into the mountainside community of Summerhaven, claimed 10 to 15 more homes Saturday. A broadcast transmission tower was also lost and some buildings at the Mount Lemmon Ski Valley were damaged, officials said.

However, firefighters did save most of the roughly 50 homes in the latest subdivision struck by the flames, Humphrey said.

Crews concentrated on digging lines to try protect the remaining homes in Summerhaven and other enclaves, along with other broadcast towers and the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, said Heidi Schewel, a fire spokeswoman.

The fire had burned across more than 6,300 acres by Saturday and firefighters fear it will char tens of thousands more before it's stopped. The cause was still under investigation.

Crews were looking for an area in the rugged terrain where they could try to stop the fire's spread. "We're slowly moving from the defensive to the offensive," Humphrey said.

More than 600 firefighters were on the job Saturday and the force is expected to grow to as many as 1,000 within a few days, he said.

The blaze was fueled by pine trees ravaged by years of drought and a beetle infestation and driven by wind gusting to 60 mph as it roared through Summerhaven on Thursday. The flames soon spread across the top of 9,157-foot Mount Lemmon and headed down the north slope.

Summerhaven had an estimated 700 homes and cabins and a handful of businesses before the blaze.

It had about 100 year-round residents but its population grew during the summer and weekends as Tucson residents drove up the mountain to escape the desert heat.

It was one of several wildfires in Arizona, where 630,000 acres burned in 2002. They included a roughly 3,500-acre blaze burning north of Roosevelt Lake, in central Arizona northeast of Phoenix. That fire was feeding on pinyon, juniper and ponderosa pines in a remote area.